Smash Bros was originally thought to be a celebration of Nintendo/1st party titles. As such, only Nintendo/1st party characters cpuld be allowed. That notion died when Snake was revealed for Brawl. Since then we have had Sonic (Mario’s rival), Mega Man, Pac-Man, Bayonetta, and Cloud Strife (one of the PS1’s mascots). I’m almost certain that Crash will be revealed before the game releases too. Now Smash Bros. has become known as a celebration of gaming in general, not just Nintendo.
My question is: Why stop there?

When you already have nearly all of gaming’s most iconic characters in history, where do you really go from there? Including iconic characters that are outside of gaming is the next logical step to make the series a bigger deal than it is. Although, I don’t think Goku is the character you have that gargantuan reveal for, I think that would be Mickey Mouse. Because, come on! Mickey Mouse and Mario beating the crap out of each other? Who wouldn’t want to see that?!?
And from that point on, Goku would only be a matter of time. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was the next one.

Smash Bros was originally thought to be a celebration of Nintendo/1st party titles. As such, only Nintendo/1st party characters cpuld be allowed. That notion died when Snake was revealed for Brawl. Since then we have had Sonic (Mario’s rival), Mega Man, Pac-Man, Bayonetta, and Cloud Strife (one of the PS1’s mascots). I’m almost certain that Crash will be revealed before the game releases too. Now Smash Bros. has become known as a celebration of gaming in general, not just Nintendo.
My question is: Why stop there?

When you already have nearly all of gaming’s most iconic characters in history, where do you really go from there? Including iconic characters that are outside of gaming is the next logical step to make the series a bigger deal than it is. Although, I don’t think Goku is the character you have that gargantuan reveal for, I think that would be Mickey Mouse. Because, come on! Mickey Mouse and Mario beating the crap out of each other? Who wouldn’t want to see that?!?
And from that point on, Goku would only be a matter of time. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was the next one.

Technically, King K. Rool already broke that “Japanese characters only” rule since he was a creation of Rare as well as Nintendo.

But I get what you’re saying.

king mickey <3

edit: sora and mickey as echo

Technically, King K. Rool already broke that “Japanese characters only” rule since he was a creation of Rare as well as Nintendo.

But I get what you’re saying.

Technically, Diddy broke that first in Brawl since he's originally a Rare character like K. Rool. Plus, Dark Samus was announced before K. Rool and was created by Retro Studios, a U.S. 1st party studio for Nintendo.